


The Sludge Death of the Universe

by chr1711



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24424843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chr1711/pseuds/chr1711
Summary: When the dead walk the Earth, someone is going to be asking questions. Inspector Monsignor Holmes of the Inquisition's Flying Squad and John H Watson (Sgt) do some investigating.
Kudos: 1





	The Sludge Death of the Universe

On the last of September 20-- Darren Jones was awoken from his slumbers at ten minutes past twelve in the afternoon by a thunderous hammering on the door.   
Is that the pizza, Darren mumbled, rearranging his position on the dubious pile of sludge under the blankets next to him.  
The thunder continued.  
Must be the fooking pizza, he concluded, and stumbled up, pulling his meagre night-coat of rags about his distended nether parts as he navigated stickily along a reasonably clean pathway from bedroom through living room to front door. A cloud of flies harrumphed and parted like the Red Sea.  
He opened the door.   
There's a man outside in a long coat smoking … well no he isn't because even Inspector Holmes of the Yard wouldn't smoke on duty when he was in the middle of an investigation.  
You look for meal, ya? said Darren, his hand upon his tackle and his food upon his mind.  
Darren Jones, said the Inspector. I am Inspector Monsignor Caerlucius Holmes, S.J and this is Sergeant Watson. Mind if we come in.  
Glark, said Darren through rotten teeth and bits of last night's pizza.  
Bloody hell guv, said the man to his right, Sergeant Gerry Watson, Watson of the Yard and he had heard all the jokes and responded correctly that Doyle's Watson is a decorated ex-soldier, a former field medic and an inner-city GP, a crack shot and a man of action. And definitely not a bumbler.  
Bloody hell, said Watson. Nearly lost my breakfast there guv. I mean have you smelt this place?  
Mind if we come in, said Holmes again, trying to barge past Darren but in fact bouncing off the shut-in's considerable heft. His trajectory thus taking him over the meagre black and grey cat which looked up from its dinner of something unspeakable on the carpet.  
Watson followed his irascible guv'nor into the flat. Flies rose in small waves and sat back down again. The stench of Flit and cat was almost unbearable. Watson would rather have faced his namesake's hostile Afghans.   
What the fookin hell is going on, said Darren.  
You're nicked son, said Watson.  
What's the charge copper, said Darren.  
Being a dirty stinking khu, said Watson and seized Darren as he was attempting to stand up.  
The sludge in the bed rippled and stirred. Being not many percentage points more sludgey than Darren and under a coverlet many vile hues of rotten pizza stains, it had not been obvious until now but it pulled back the coverlet and stuck out a violet eye.  
Glork, it said.  
Guv'nor, said Watson. Do we want to take that in as well? It's evidence.  
He pointed to the sludge.  
Gloook, said the sludge, flopping back onto the bed. Flunch-click!  
I believe this is sentient sludge, said Holmes, animated by dark forces as yet unimaginable save by myself. I mean, we raised the dark forces, didn’t we? All that malarkey? Do you remember, holding their heads under water until they nearly drowned? all part of the ball game I took my children to. They were most taken with the sacrifices at the end. But we Don't Do That Any More, remember? If the ancestors did it, doesn’t mean we do. We’re peaceful folk these days. It's a blood libel, that's what it is. Things that you're li'ble to read in the dark bible, ain't necessarily so.  
Blooogle oop, said the sludge.  
Holmes wandered over to the sludge which burped foully in his direction.   
I do indeed wonder, he said, if this sludge was once human. If it ate and drank and hated as we all do. In which case,   
Darren Aloysius Jones, said Holmes. You're nicked again. This time it's murder.

A philosophical point though, said Holmes, much later when Darren was in the cells. If one is still sentient but no longer human, would killing it be murder? Or something else?  
Dunno guv, said Watson. They were in the Albert Pierrepoint Arms on a long road past the gasworks where the orts of long-fallen walls stood like broken sentinels and the red river mud seeped up from a buried river which many centuries ago had divided a tribe of Kent from one of Mercia and odd small objects had been dredged up fewer and fewer across the years and the land marked 'not worth excavating' and then 'for redevelopment' while beneath that mud a near-complete Roman villa floor slumbered forever unfound. In the redeveloped future there would also be no place for the Albert Pierrepoint and it too would fall, its only memorial a thousand computer games, a building lost in a dry and gritty wind and the hunched shapes of abandoned vans and cars and the distant rattle and hum of electric trains.  
Wilfred Scawen lights a blunt in the corner.  
But chummy was definitely dead, said Watson. If he ends up in the Sludgeroo he won’t be alive at the time.   
Oh no doubt about it, said Holmes, dead as Marley. No heart beat, no heart for that matter unless the forensics can find one. And came back and we all know what that means. Murder. No, the deceased was definitely a stiff and had joined the choir invisible despite the corse being animated by something that had fleeting memories of humanity, as do we all. A dying fall that took long enough that sludge had taken over as it must every one of us. Reanimate the pro caritas corpus and the decay processes go on and on. Dig up the dead and the 'ggots will follow. Though in chummy's case it was too late for maggots. No, my Watson, sludge is ahead of us all and the sludge death of the universe will eventually take over. And when the human corse is foully murdered then it becomes violet-eyed sludge.  
Think of it, Watson, he said. when the Last Trump sounds and tonnes and metric tonnes of sludge uplift themselves and rear violet-eyed and swaying like one who has imbibed of several pints of Old Nether Wallop and found all of a sudden his nethers being walloped.   
That one wasn't doing much uplifting, Watson pointed out.  
Well no, said Holmes. But then neither was Darren, the fat slob. Fuck’s sake. The English don’t deserve England.  
Murdering fat slob, said Watson.  
That, said Holmes. I mean, we assume he was the killer? I think we can for now. But we have another visit to make today. Did we not mention the Sludgeroo? We did.

The Sludgepacker lived in a garage in a quiet part of town where the street outside curved down towards the railway and approaching from the street down that broken pathway you could believe yourself in some rural backwater with dogs and chickens running about and the iron stink of rusting implements - or was that all? - permeating the air. He was not paid, was the Sludgepacker - if he had been paid by one gang the other gang would have robbed him. But if they fed and housed him what would the rival gang do about that? Employed by both the White Dog Crew and the Shed End Boys to fulfil the same function, that of rendering down the sludge that, reanimated, remained of the persons they had past-tensed, the Sludgepacker was a lean and ascetic figure given to declaring wisdom such as "The light is in the dark and the dark is in the light." It was true that on one occasion the White Dog Crew had indeed upended him and made him disgorge his repast but that was only once and he did not, as he pointed out, eat much. He was also sometimes known as the Sludginator and answered to both; his original name was something he had long since disposed of, as though it too had gone into the pit between its high fences to each side and the back of a storage depot and the back of the garages.

Disposing of sludgies every day, he told Holmes and Watson, doesn't give you much of an appetite.  
You cannot, he went on, expect my employers to put up with sludgies shambling around all over the place. They are to be rendered down. When murder victims get up and start sludging about and staring with violet eyes demanding their death be avenged, like Shakespearean ghosts, well then. Nobody loves a snitch.  
And leaving his small and immaculate room in the fore part of the garage they went out back to where a huge and satanic Pit extended fully three metres across, the whole bubbling evilly and red-brown with a roil of noxious sludge the fumes from which alone were sufficient to turn a lesser individual's stomach. Occasional limbs and heads reached above the sludgeroo and then sank back again. Violet eyes squeezed closed with sudden apparent pain. A hell-pit it was and in colours more vividly red and brown and ochre and cinnamon and scarlet and orange and tawny than a village Bonnard could have imagined.  
Jury-rigged tanks of lye hung above the pit and green-painted pipes angled down from them with their open nozzles above the surface.   
A tall, lean dog, creamy-white fur flecked with tan and brown, nosed around the Pit and loped off in search of a better source of doggy fun.  
Rambo the Andean wolfhound could give a good account of himself, but at heart he was a gentle soul who liked treats and cuddles. The worst the law-abiding had to fear from Rambo was that he would try to sit on their lap as though he was still a pup and not a thirty-kilo adult, and then lick them to death.  
The cat, Mister Cuddles, was another matter entirely and could rake you with his claws from a surprising distance.  
He's a stretchy-cat, the Sludgepacker said, watching the dark-furred beast slouch along the line of the back wall and then sit in a patch of sunlight to groom itself. Mister Cuddles, he indiarubber.  
Stretchy, said Holmes. I am familiar with the idea as it applies to humans - particularly persons working in circuses but more often these days persons in the public eye will reveal a propos de rien that they are stretchy and there's nothing wrong with that. But a cat? New to me. Still, never mind, it's your cat.  
Not really mine, said the Sludgepacker. If I have nothing then nothing can be taken from me.  
Except your life, said Watson. And your appendages, etcetera.  
Well, yes, said the Sludgepacker. But only that. Although sludgies always seem to develop the violet eyes after their first death, I have seen them who have been so sorely misused that the loss of an appendage or two was just an aperitif. And if I did say my dog, or my cat I have a horrid feeling one or both would end up in the Pit, struggling miserably but none could help the poor struggler. These are not nice people we are dealing with, but then that is all to the good. Whoever said you had to be nice?  
We’d like a word, said Holmes, with your latest arrival. He gestured towards a gooey, inconstant figure nearby. We have some questions.  
You’ll be lucky, said the Sludginator, to get any sense out of a sludgie.   
I know, said Holmes. But wait.  
The Sludginator nodded, understanding. The afternoon grew warmer and the rising stench of the sludgeroo rolled over them like an eructation in a cinema one afternoon of heat.   
The sludgie in question, once one Wayne Mitchell, stood haplessly by the edge of the sludgetank and hummed horribly. Then it exploded as several high-calibre shells hit it in various parts of its anatomy.  
Oh, said the Sludginator. I've been expecting you lads.

The new arrivals are well tooled up even by local standards. An assortment of firepower with muzzles and magazines and triggers and the rest of it. Its owners are three dubious-looking specimens who stand about as though expecting an encore. A distant holed-bagpipe wheeze is an expiring donkey beyond the wall, hit by a wayward rifle shell. Holmes, whose Queren code holds the lives of children and animals as sacred, which leads some to vegetarianism, but all against random creature death for its own sake - Holmes looks reproachfully at their leader, a crusty individual with a wayward beard, a red shirt, black waistcoat and trousers, and comical lace-up boots. He can see the dying donkey through the remains of a window, a thing mostly frame and the lower half of a wall allowing a view both inside and out.

A Sancho le necesita caminar, says Holmes.  
Sancho?  
Si. Ustedes mataron a su burro.  
No lo se, says Red Shirt.   
Quien eres? says Holmes.  
Yo soy Camisa de Sangre.  
Y yo el Inspector Monseñor Caerlucius Holmes, del Brigada Movil de la Inquisicion, y el Sergente Watson.  
No le esperaba.  
Nadie espera al Brigada Movil, says Holmes.   
Necesita whiskey, says Camisa de Sangre.  
No hay whiskey.  
No?  
No.  
No???  
No. Como quieres que hagui whiskey por aqui?  
Hagui? Eres Queren?  
Si, says Holmes, though the old tongue, the Vella, is not necessarily a sign of being a Queren and his one-word lapse into it is symbolic more of his discomfort than of being linguistically stumped. And wonders if Camisa de Sangre is going to get even more unpleasant now.  
But Camisa is nodding sagely.  
Bueno, he says. Hubiera sido, yo, pero soy demasiado malo. No se.  
Hay actos malos, says Holmes. No personas malos. Although he remains unconvinced.   
Suponer que haya personas malos, says Holmes, es decir que uno no pueda cambiar sus acciones. Es pecado original, un juego por la religion organizada para insistir que la gente vuelva a la Iglesia, y consigue volviendo. Pero si se puede cambiar de intento ...   
Acaso el robador puede no robar, says Camisa. Pero es su naturaleza.  
Y si se cambia, says Holmes.  
Camisa nods, imagining change. 

What's going on, says the Sludginator. They're talking, I was expecting killing. Y'know. You get a lot of that. But we all die. You're a military man, you know that.  
No idea, says Watson. They went off into a disquisition. In Spanish.   
I wasn't expecting that, says the Sludginator.   
Watson beams at him. 

The burro is now a collapsed heap on the sandy soil, its life fled from it. Slowly the organisms deep within it begin their work and its eyes, once dark and liquid brown, become a curious shade of violet. New organisms are at work in this world - and they hop the species barrier: humans and now stretchy cats, people and now violet-eyed shambling sludge donkeys.  
The dead donkey heaves itself up. Shambles doughily towards the broken wall and its corner, stumbling towards its personal Bethlehem to be born. Rough, it certainly was, and violet-eyed.   
A zombie donkey, says the Sludginator. A zonkey. Well that's a first. And he nods approvingly.  
The zonkey sludges towards Camisa de Sangre and brays horribly at him. It sounds and smells even worse than when it was alive. With an unsludgelike speed it lunges at the bandit and pushes him bodily into the Pit. He flies some distance towards the centre and lands on the surface with a splash.  
Well I'll be, says Holmes. Camisa de Sangre splutters and descends slowly and horribly into the pit. The dog Rambo stands teeth bared between the pit and the men on dry land - guarding Camisa's death, it would seem. The cat is sitting on the dog's back and waving stretchy clawed paws about. One vicious paw swipes the air close to a henchman's nose.  
One of Camisa's men pulls out a gun and points it at the dog.  
Before he can blink Holmes's own gun is pointed at the gunman's head.  
Just try it, says Holmes. And you'll be next. Watson has his gun in his hand, trained on the other hoodlum.  
Camisa is spluttering and sinking further.  
The zonkey sludges off.  
Eventually Camisa sinks bubbling and groaning and wheezing beneath the surface and the standoff is over.  
He won't be back, says Holmes.  
Was he not murdered? says Watson. I wonder if he will, you know. Violet eyes and all.  
The Scottish Play trick, says Holmes. No man of woman born. Nothing about 'no donkey'. Especially a dead donkey like that one. Just think - the dead donkey dropped him.  
Camisa de Sangre is reduced to a few fingers waving above the sludgeroo.  
His men look on stupidly and turn and hightail it out of there.  
The dog trots over to Watson who scritches it behind the ears. It looks up adoringly. The cat has vanished in search of a mouse to torment.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT CHAV 

Elephant walks into a corner shop to buy drugs from beneath the counter. He is smartly attired in Burberry and a cap and white trainers. Once outside with the gear he begins walking up and down and waving his arms at people.  
He walks into the middle of the road with a cry of "Come at me bruv!"  
A Number 265 bus collides with him. It is no small thing to collide with an elephant.

Holmes pondered the sludgeroo and the Sludgemaker and he holstered his gun in the rising heat of the afternoon and the occasional caw of a strange bird upon the telegraph lines like underlinings of this mutant world. Watson and the dog were deep in some kind of trans-species communication and Holmes pondered the strange love of humans and dogs and how dogs could pass for telepathic with the people they love. Foxes on the other hand run straight past you intent on the rat they saw just now. Some have conflated wild animals with the tame and the domestic and not been eaten as a result, but not all.

You’ve made a friend, says Holmes.  
Another friend, says Watson and looks fondly up at him standing framed like Gary Cooper (super duper) in the afternoon light. With a lingering look backwards at Rambo the dog and a sketched salute at the Sludginator who has turned back to his work, and pointedly ignoring the cat which does the same for him, he leaves the compound.  
The donkey shambles to a corner and gives itself up to the turning wheel of life and death.  
The Sludge ripples and sighs.


End file.
